Tag: big bang

I used to believe infinity extended in all directions: outward into space and inward into the tiniest particles, from the past into the future, backward and forward in the reflections of a mirror reflecting a mirror, and around and around a circle. However, now I suspect that “infinity” means little more than “goes a very long ways.”

If you keep following a circle or a figure eight (the symbol of infinity) around and around, the shapes seems to go on forever, but who could follow them forever? Someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder on the very best crack could only follow the symbol around and around for a couple days at most. Once the crackhead stopped tracing the shape, the eternal symbol would cease to be eternal. A circle and a figure eight do not go around and around forever. They just sit there. Only our eyes go round and round.

Truth is a process not a product, an attempt, not an achievement. Truth is relative; different kinds of writing are true in different ways. Some writings may be true because the facts are very close to “reality”. Others may be true because they more accurately convey the writer’s experience of the event, the feelings, the impressions, and the personal significance. Some writings express a truth metaphorically or artistically or religiously or scientifically. All truth is partial and biased, but it is still true. In fact, it is all true in a sense. It is all true because it all exists, in coded form in books, databases and synapses in the brain, true because writing takes place as real events, events which actually happen, when the writer is writing and the reader is reading.